let me drive my van into your heart
hi!
My birthday was last week, so I took the day off work and went to the aquarium with the goal of seeing every single shark. I think I did it! It was a wonderful day, and really excellent to get away from my life for half a day. Here I am yelling in joy while instagramming the experience:
Notable Breakfast
Dog Thing
Mixed Media
I love architecture, and for some reason–perhaps because I grew up walking under the coffered curves of the DC Metro–I love brutalist architecture. Maybe because brutalism feels so inhuman, almost otherworldly. Whatever it is, it makes my brain happy to see it. Here are some of my favourite photographs of brutalist architecture.
I was looking for a lighthearted, undemanding anime to watch and my friend recommended My Hero Academia, which is neither of those things and has basically consumed my entire life. My Hero Academia is about a school for superpowered teenagers. It’s a lot of fun, and there’s a lot about it that I love, but it falls victim to a lot of shonen tropes that drive me up the wall (why does there always have to be a character who’s just a straight-up pervert??). It’s a problematic fave, but I’m in it for now. On the other end of the spectrum of anime-about-specialized-schools is Little Witch Academia, which is perfectly perfect and not at all a challenge to watch. I’d seen and loved the two Little Witch Academia short films, but it’s as if for the series the creative team decided to go all-in on the premise of “Harry Potter, but everyone is a girl, the aesthetic is very spooky art nouveau, and it’s just better.” And they killed it! It’s so good! The world is beautiful and interesting, the characters are fantastic, and they seem perfectly aware of all of the fantasy conventions they’re improving upon, which is wholly charming. The only bad thing I can say about it is that Netflix has only posted half the season. Give me more, please!
I read A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Leguin. These were my first Leguin books, and I liked them (enough to keep reading the series!) but they didn’t grab me. I read The Golden Lion, which is the 4th book in Mike Maihack’s wonderful series Cleopatra in Space. Just a great series. I got impatient for more My Hero Academia after I caught up on the anime, so I dove into the manga. The anime is a very close adaptation, so the things I love and the things I hate are pretty much the same across both of them. Nevertheless, I am completely obsessed.
I bought the Steven Universe soundtrack and have listened to it so much the songs are constantly in my head. No regrets. A friend recommended I check out Diet Cig, and I like them a lot! “Link in Bio” is my fave single. Despite my feelings about the movie, the Baby Driver soundtrack is very good.
I saw Baby Driver! I was really excited about Baby Driver! I....did not love Baby Driver! The sound mixing and editing are as fantastic as everyone has said, but there’s not a lot underneath that. It felt to me like a slick and stylish music video with no real substance and extremely disappointing women characters. I missed the 2nd week in my cinema’s Studio Ghibli festival for birthday exhaustion reasons (I’m old now! I get tired!), but made it to week three, which was Ponyo, a film I’d only ever seen when it first came out! I think I’d written it off as sort of pretty fluff, but on rewatching I fell in love with it. It’s so sweet and full of heart, and Sosuke’s mom Lisa is maybe the best original Ghibli character, don’t @ me. The woman calmly outraces the literal ocean!
Anxiety Pyjamas
Fics I Shouted About
Pulling Apart Miracles by RC_McLachlan // Yuri!!! On Ice, Yuri/Otabek. Yuri is very ill before a competition. There isn’t a lot that happens in this fic, but the voices are so on-point that it’s just a delight.
turn over a stone by Febricant // Check Please!, Kent/Tater, future fic. This is a sequel to the excellent “kick on the starter,” which made me care deeply about 2 characters I’d never even thought about. It’s a beautiful meditation on the career realities of athletes, and if you can ever feel at home as an ex-pat.
soft boy loves soft boy by lazulisong & ayabai // Yuri!!! On Ice, Victor/Yuuri, future fic. Two incredibly perfect scenes from Yuuri and Victor’s life in St. Petersburg. Just DELIGHTFUL.
cinderella by verity // Yuri!!! On Ice, Yuri/Otabek. The way these two relate to each other continues to fascinate me, and I’m so glad to be in good company on that. In this, Yuri is slowly figuring out what his body wants of him, and Otabek has an extremely generous definition of friendship.
Lastly
bye!!
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